“Without the slightest disposition to create unpleasant sensations,” said he, “to go back upon the footsteps of the last four years, I do unequivocally say that I believe the country will never see such another Administration as the last. It had my hearty approbation for one half of its career; as for my opinion of the remainder of it, it has been no secret. The lean kine of Pharaoh devoured the fat kine; the last four years, with the embargo in their train, ate up the rich harvest of the first four; and if we had not had some Joseph to have stepped in and changed the state of things, what would have been now the condition of the country? I repeat it,--never has there been any Administration which went out of office and left the country in a state so deplorable and calamitous as the last.” Not satisfied with criticising Jefferson, Randolph committed himself to the opinion that Canning had been influenced by the same antipathy, and had been withheld from earlier concessions only by Jefferson’s conduct:-- “Mr. Canning obtained as good a bargain from us as he could have expected to obtain; and those gentlemen who speak of his having heretofore had it in his power to have done the same, did not take into calculation the material difference between the situation in which we now stand and the situation in which we before stood.” In the virulence of temper with which Randolph blackened the Administration of Jefferson, he could not help committing himself to unqualified support of Madison; and even Barent Gardenier, whose temper was at least as indiscreet as Randolph’s, seemed to revel in the pleasure of depressing the departed President in order to elevate the actual Executive, whose eight years of coming power were more dangerous to the opposition than the eight years of Jefferson had ever been. “I am pretty well satisfied,” said Barent Gardenier,[64] “that when the secret history of the two last years is divulged, it will be found that while the former President was endeavoring to fan the flames of war, the Secretary of State ... was smoothing the way for the happy discharge of his Presidential duties when he should come to the chair. I think it did him honor.... It is for the promptitude and frankness with which the President met the late overture that I thank him most cordially for my country. I approve it most heartily.... And it is now in proof before us, as I have said and contended, that nothing was wanting but a proper spirit of conciliation, and fair and honorable dealing on the part of this country, to bring to a happy issue all the fictitious differences between this country and Great Britain.”